Using States to Supplant Cultural Leftism

The battle we fight today is not about elections. We should win walkover election victories against a narcissistic, incompetent neo-Marxist flanked by such bubble-brains and Biden and Pelosi. The problem we face is not politics. It is partly the establishment leftist media, but that is a dying creature on life support; it is partly public schools and university education, but we are fighting with increasing seriousness against that problem.

The biggest problem is the deforestation of American culture, caused by the slash-and-burn tactics of leftism. Television entertainment, film, music, and all the other subliminal signals which are incomparably more effective in molding public consciousness than overtly preachy leftist cant reinforce the condition that, as a people, we increasingly cannot share wholesome and common entertainment and recreation.

Although conservatives are reluctant to look to government as the solution to any problem, the promotion of American culture is a legitimate aim of a nation committed to ordered liberty. The left, of course, has used PBS, the National Endowment for the Arts, and public radio to present programming which quietly supports its philosophy for a long time.

Republicans cannot affect federal public cultural and entertainment programming, but Republicans control completely the governments -- that is, the governor's seat and both houses of the state legislature -- of half of the states, and there is nothing to prevent these states from producing television, radio, and even film entertainment which truly entertains.

The British have done this magnificently. The BBC, hardly a hotbed of conservatism, has produced programming vastly better than anything Americans have produced and which is delightfully free of ideological straitjackets. Those of us who have watched series like Last of the Summer Wine, All Creatures Great and Small, Lovejoy Mysteries, All You Being Served?, and Yes, PrimeMinister, or series like I, Claudius, know that government bureaucracies like the BBC, when serious about entertaining without preaching, create wonderful programming. It is a testament to these treasures that the viewer cannot guess about the politics of the actors or the producers. The programs deal with the human condition as it truly is.

The politically correct entertainment industry is not going to give us anything like this sort of programming, but if each Republican state government produced just one such program, with the highest production values and a conscious excision of any of the dreary leftist gibberish which Hollywood loves, then there would be the potential to transform our culture.

Another area in which state government public broadcasting could do a great service is to produce shows which expose all the petty wickedness of those protected by the left today. Consider, for example, the effect of an entertainment series focusing on the hateful bigotries of radical feminists or the overbearing nature of college professors or the gleeful mischief of racial shakedown artists or the corruption of Washington journalists.

The British Yes, Minister and its successor Yes, Prime Minister series go even farther: these bore deeply and delightfully into the banal and selfish collaboration of politicians with bureaucrats, and all the greedy groups like public employees unions and news organizations. One series like that would expose comfortable, well-perched leftism to the ridicule it deserves.

Beyond that, imagine if each state supported a documentary revealing neglected areas of history -- what about a serialization of The Gulag Archipelago or the lives of those Americans who betrayed their nation during the Cold War or the American communists who for almost two years fought every effort to resist Hitler? How about a documentary on the failures and the constitutional usurpations of Franklin Roosevelt in the New Deal? Letting Americans understand these things matters, exposing the left to the spotlight of satire and of comedy matters, and providing ordinary Americans with entertainment which has no message at all but just makes us laugh matters as well. Today our nation is a vast wasteland in which we share no common culture, really, at all.

We are losing a war we cannot afford to lose. Why? We are not really fighting it, and the left is. Obama wants the federal government to keep supporting Big Bird and, by implication, PBS? Let us use Republican state governments to add to the pool of popular culture entertainment which entertains without preaching.

This is serious business. If we lose this battle, we will lose the war. And we are losing right now.

The battle we fight today is not about elections. We should win walkover election victories against a narcissistic, incompetent neo-Marxist flanked by such bubble-brains and Biden and Pelosi. The problem we face is not politics. It is partly the establishment leftist media, but that is a dying creature on life support; it is partly public schools and university education, but we are fighting with increasing seriousness against that problem.

The biggest problem is the deforestation of American culture, caused by the slash-and-burn tactics of leftism. Television entertainment, film, music, and all the other subliminal signals which are incomparably more effective in molding public consciousness than overtly preachy leftist cant reinforce the condition that, as a people, we increasingly cannot share wholesome and common entertainment and recreation.

Although conservatives are reluctant to look to government as the solution to any problem, the promotion of American culture is a legitimate aim of a nation committed to ordered liberty. The left, of course, has used PBS, the National Endowment for the Arts, and public radio to present programming which quietly supports its philosophy for a long time.

Republicans cannot affect federal public cultural and entertainment programming, but Republicans control completely the governments -- that is, the governor's seat and both houses of the state legislature -- of half of the states, and there is nothing to prevent these states from producing television, radio, and even film entertainment which truly entertains.

The British have done this magnificently. The BBC, hardly a hotbed of conservatism, has produced programming vastly better than anything Americans have produced and which is delightfully free of ideological straitjackets. Those of us who have watched series like Last of the Summer Wine, All Creatures Great and Small, Lovejoy Mysteries, All You Being Served?, and Yes, PrimeMinister, or series like I, Claudius, know that government bureaucracies like the BBC, when serious about entertaining without preaching, create wonderful programming. It is a testament to these treasures that the viewer cannot guess about the politics of the actors or the producers. The programs deal with the human condition as it truly is.

The politically correct entertainment industry is not going to give us anything like this sort of programming, but if each Republican state government produced just one such program, with the highest production values and a conscious excision of any of the dreary leftist gibberish which Hollywood loves, then there would be the potential to transform our culture.

Another area in which state government public broadcasting could do a great service is to produce shows which expose all the petty wickedness of those protected by the left today. Consider, for example, the effect of an entertainment series focusing on the hateful bigotries of radical feminists or the overbearing nature of college professors or the gleeful mischief of racial shakedown artists or the corruption of Washington journalists.

The British Yes, Minister and its successor Yes, Prime Minister series go even farther: these bore deeply and delightfully into the banal and selfish collaboration of politicians with bureaucrats, and all the greedy groups like public employees unions and news organizations. One series like that would expose comfortable, well-perched leftism to the ridicule it deserves.

Beyond that, imagine if each state supported a documentary revealing neglected areas of history -- what about a serialization of The Gulag Archipelago or the lives of those Americans who betrayed their nation during the Cold War or the American communists who for almost two years fought every effort to resist Hitler? How about a documentary on the failures and the constitutional usurpations of Franklin Roosevelt in the New Deal? Letting Americans understand these things matters, exposing the left to the spotlight of satire and of comedy matters, and providing ordinary Americans with entertainment which has no message at all but just makes us laugh matters as well. Today our nation is a vast wasteland in which we share no common culture, really, at all.

We are losing a war we cannot afford to lose. Why? We are not really fighting it, and the left is. Obama wants the federal government to keep supporting Big Bird and, by implication, PBS? Let us use Republican state governments to add to the pool of popular culture entertainment which entertains without preaching.

This is serious business. If we lose this battle, we will lose the war. And we are losing right now.